On Our Way To Greatness Blog

I came across this George Couros tweet: 

Having benefitted from having an amazing leader in my career who brought out the best in people, she is the standard in my mind for what leadership can truly be. Great leaders bring out gifts in the people they serve - "The Best Leaders Give Value" https://t.co/K88a5b55XF

— George Couros (@gcouros) July 17, 2019

It brought me back to all of the influencers in my career in schools - there were many.  I think that the ones who were the best at it were best at what George is restating from Paul LaRue's article and that is they identified that each person that they serve (note the word use there) had value and were most importantly able to extract that to help the whole team.  Mastering this two-step process is what I think separates these great influencers from the others.  I really enjoyed the quote from former Governor-General, novelist, and historian John Buchan:

So as leaders we need to go into our searching for value in the people we serve with the open/growth/positive mindsets that each person has greatness within them.  If you don't believe this is the case, I would ask you to look in the person in the mirror.  The first step is to identify what that greatness that brings value to the team.  How to do this best?  Relationships.  The more you understand the person, the more your eyes open to their potential.  This may come from working day-to-day with them, having challenging conversations, seeing them in different roles, in a school (teacher, mentor, coach, organizer, etc.) and keeping an eye on where they hold value.  If we don't take the time to work on that relationship the task of seeing and finding that value diminishes.

The second step of the process once you have identified the value in those you serve you need ask yourself these questions:

• How can the value best serve our students?
• How can the value benefit the person who holds the value?  I recently heard the acronym the WIIFM (What's in it for me factor.)
• How can the value lift the value of others?
• How will this value potentially affect the value of others in a negative way?

Once a leader knows the answer to these or at least has most of these answered you can get an idea of how this person on your team can bring that value.  It might be that they need something to ignite them, like a prompting, a certain work environment, or a combination of working partners.  I've learned from my influencers that we, as leaders,  are people who set the environment for our people we serve to be great.  An easy analogy is that of a farmer; we are planting seeds.  If the ground is prime for growth, it will happen given time.

My hope is that as a leader you can look at each person you serve and find the greatness within them and then create that environment to extract that value they bring so in turn students are the benefactor in their learning and the person benefits from seeing the results.

I love Twitter I'll be honest.  I would consider it as one of the best resources an educator could use today (with a critical eye as always of course!)  If you are a Twitter user like myself, finding great content that you can use in your school, whether it is for helping grow one of your staff members, to help enhance your efforts to drive an idea at a staff meeting, or will aid in your upcoming professional development work, was all about clicking the magical heart icon or like keeping it in your list of likes for future reference.  Now that begs the question "did you REALLY like it?"  I guess that depends on your definition. 

With the addition of the bookmarks function in Twitter you now have the ability to not only like a tweet, but to save it to your private list of bookmarks that are strictly just for your eyes only.  The big difference here is that every time you "like" a tweet, it is publicly viewable.  So your best-kept secret for your upcoming workshop or staff meeting can stay with you.  But remember...sharing is caring!  Be humble.  The bookmarking feature was available beginning at the end of February so it's fairly new.  In my efforts to continue to blog this feature has been quite valuable so far.  I've created this post as well in the hopes that my current AQ course colleagues can use this moving forward in their professional blogs and portfolios and other educators who come across this.  So remember, when you're doing your summer reading and you drop that bookmark in between the pages of the book, remember there is now a digital version;  of a really, really big book out there.

Here is the official tweet from Twitter with the explainer video on how to use this very helpful tool:

Found something historic?
Don’t want to forget a joke?
Article that you want to read later?

Save the Tweet with Bookmarks, and come back to it whenever you want. Only you can see your Bookmarks. pic.twitter.com/fM2QLcOYNF

— Twitter (@Twitter) February 28, 2018

Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash

Almost five years after I've started my blog posts, I'm excited to be at it once again.  I've been encouraged by my colleagues not only around the province, but the country and the world by the thought-provoking posts that they publish almost on a daily basis.  We are in good hands.  So to get back to this particular blog, my original posts, I believe there were four, were to share some neat things that I was doing in my role at that time and my heavy involvement with technology integration with the classroom.  Since then, I have moved a bit away from technology and into the aspect of leadership in education. 

Currently, I am taking the Principals Development Course, an additional qualification that is available for principals and vice principals put on by the Ontario Principals Council.  There are a series of available modules that are focussed on a given topic relating to current topics and more understanding that will enrich our leadership across the province.  I have a great group that I'm currently taking this module with from all points across Ontario.  They all have given some great energy and advice through their experiences.  We are currently tasked in this current module with creating a blog and our first blog posting.  The topic of our module is creating a digital portfolio and that will be done through our blog site. 

I really appreciate the task, not just because I'm a techie per se, but it is embracing something that I feel we all need to do more of; sharing best practices.  If we share, we care of course but if we share with the intent on giving gratitude to one another that is just modeling what we want to see in our schools, building that digital citizenship and character trait profile.  Sharing also gives reason to look for and strive to find solutions to the current roadblocks in front of us in education.  It is these solutions, that allow us to Crt-Alt-Del and restart.

I have the opportunity to share this Friday with colleagues for our board-wide professional learning day focusing on numeracy. My sharing moment will be in the form of presenting a couple quick sessions on introducing binary. Of course, in an attempt to mix things up and give some life to the session I will be presenting within the framework of explaining a joke — the binary joke. I know, I know…the approach could be good or bad. By the way, that’s binary.

The fact is we are presented with many binary decisions, answers, problems to solve in each of our days. I’m quite biased being a Computer Science-based educator, but I do believe that we have a role in exposing students to binary early in school. Why? Well, I’ve eluded to this briefly in my Haiku Deck that was created for my session,

So here I was…two weeks until the end of my summer and where was I headed bright and early on a Wednesday morning? I was off to inspire.

Inspiring others really has to be one of the most gratifying moments that one can feel. You’ve given a viewer or listener hope, a new outlook/viewpoint, or reason. It is like a “super” connection or a chemical reaction that takes place in the moment. As an educator, you can tell when this happens; eyes get larger, the lightbulb face we all know, or the quick reaction of telling others around. In fact as educators, we inspire each and every day in the classroom. But does it have to remain there?

I was asked to participate in our school board’s Teaching and Learning in a Digital World (or TLDW) conference and I jumped at the idea.

This past school year I took a risk.

The risk was to dive into Mobile App Development in my Computer Science courses. As educators, I believe we should take risks, we should go near that edge of our comfort zone for the simple reason that it is where we all learn. As models for our students we should be modeling the idea of lifelong learning anyhow. When we take risks, we receive feedback which provides us some insight into what direction we go next to improve.

I’m curious what your risks were this past school year? Are you taking any risks this year and coming out of your comfort zone? Feel free to comment below.

Students are amazing.

Each year of my career I look back and reflect on some of the events that transpire in my classes, in my school, and our school board. With the rise of social networking, the education field, like many others, are closer than ever in their abilities to learn and share those same ‘amazing’ experiences.

I have decided to create this blog in the hopes of not only sharing my own amazing experiences, but to also touch on the ideas and thoughts educators have when it comes to more effective teaching. I believe it is our ability to innovate, communicate, and relate to the students in our classrooms and in our school communities that will drive this increase in the effectiveness of student learning.